If You Find Me(73)

Kidnapped.

Ryan’s flyer, making paper noises in the wind.

“Everyone was looking for you.” His eyes are slanted at the tips, just like the girl’s in the flyer. “I registered you with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and put up posters for years. I even went on the news a bunch of times.”

We didn’t have a television in the woods. Would I have seen him if we had?

“That day we found you, it finally made sense. She’d hidden you away in the middle of nowhere, in an eight-and-a-half-thousand-acre forest. Even if someone had seen you, who’d be suspicious of a family gone camping?”

I think of how many people we’d seen when we lived in the Hundred Acre Wood.

A few hikers. Drug dealers. Men who liked kids. No one who could help.

No one, in all those years.

My father turns my face to his, forcing me to look him in the eye.

“Aren’t you happy at the farm? Haven’t we been good to you?”

His question is like the seed to a planet-size ache. He wants to give me back all that I’ve lost. I don’t know how to let him.

“Life isn’t like this! It’s not real!”

[page]“What do you mean?”

“No one gets hugs and new clothes and all this good stuff for nothing.” I mimic Mama’s voice. “ ‘Everythin’ gets paid for in one way or another, girl, and flesh is more plentiful around here. Young flesh pays more. So git goin’!’ ”

Now he knows that, too. But he doesn’t flinch.

“This isn’t what life is like.” My voice breaks. My words aren’t saying what I mean, but I don’t know how to explain it clearer. I think of Jenessa the way she is now, like a pink-cheeked crocus pushing up through the snow. I want to be wrong more than anything in the world.

“This isn’t real,” I whisper.

“Says who? Who says what’s real? What your mama did was unreal. She doesn’t have the last word on real. Maybe I do.”

My shoulders shake. I make sounds a person could never make on purpose.

“Families aren’t like what your mama did to you. Or what she had you do.”

I hide my face in my arms and sob.

“I can’t erase those years, Carey, and God knows I’d give my life to make yours and Jenessa’s whole again. I can’t give you back all the time she stole from us. That’s the hardest thing to reconcile.”

Tears slide down his cheeks, their path determined by the lines and wrinkles in his face. My tears continue to fall, but for all of us—him, Ness, myself, and even Gran.

“All I can hope is that the lean years made you stronger, and that you’ll get through this like you got through that. But no matter what happens, you and Jenessa always have a home with me.”

I break down completely, and when he reaches for me, I let him. He holds me to him and we cry together, holding on for dear life. I breathe in the smoky smell of his sheepskin coat, rough against my cheek. The h word measuring my humeris fans its wings into a D.

Dad.

I close my eyes, trying to remember him from before. It’s so hard.

“I can’t remember much from before the woods,” I say, hiccup-ing through my tears. “Not you, not living indoors, not tap water or light switches or bubble baths. Not even Christmas.”

He holds me tighter, his stubbly chin resting on my head.

“Give it time. It’ll come back when you’re ready.”

He rocks me back and forth, back and forth, as long as I need it.

Then: “So, anymore secrets?”

“Ryan Shipley.” My words are muffled by his coat. “He’s my best friend.”

“I reckon he is. You were like two peas in a pod once upon a time.” He chuckles. “You’d better bring him by the house, then. Been a few years since I’ve seen that boy.”

“Yes, sir.”

It’s true: Ryan’s my best friend. But what I don’t say is that I love him. From the tips of my chunky hair to the wiggle in my clean toes, I love him. My stomach squirms like worms (in a good way) just thinking about him. And I reckon when love’s in short supply, you know it all the more when it finds you.

“See,” my dad says, grinning.

“What?”

“You remember some things.”

“Some things I don’t want to remember.”

“That’d be normal, I guess. But some things you need to remember. Or how else will you know who you are?”

I turn to him. I have to say it out loud. For the girl in the woods.

“My name is Carey Violet Benskin. My mama kidnapped me when I was five years old.”

“You have no idea how many people were looking for you, sweetheart.”

“And I was just over yonder, in the woods,” I say wistfully.

“Might as well have been a whole ’nother world,” he replies.

This is our world, now, our own special bubble. He drives with one hand on the wheel, his other arm around me. I snuggle against him, flesh, blood, and bone, our combined breath fogging the side windows.

I think of the writing on the camper wall, just above the baseboard, scrawled by my six-year-old self. I saw it when I retrieved Gran’s watch; up until then, I’d forgotten all about it. If you find me, take me home, I’d written. Like I knew, somehow, this day was coming.